Under the Willows, Maple Durham
- Catalogue number
-
SO 0002
- Artist
-
Edwin Edwards
- Printer
-
Elizabeth Ruth Escombe (Ruth Edwards)
- Date
-
1861
- Medium
-
Etching and drypoint
- Dimensions [to plate mark]
-
237 x 165 mm
Subject
Mapledurham House glimpsed between willow trunks overhanging the bank of the River Thames. Inscribed on the reverse, probably by Ruth Edwards, but pencil annotation unrecorded before framing.
One of the etchings commenced by Edwin Edwards during the excursion by boat between Sunbury to Mapledurham which he organised in June 1861 with James McNeill Whistler and Matthew White Ridley.1 Mapledurham House is an Elizabethan mansion near Purley in Surrey and the Mapledurham area was a frequent subject of Edwards' etchings. This print resembles Édouard Manet's contemporary depiction of a semi-rural riverbank understood from the city-dwellers point of view in Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863). In both works (unamended, calligraphic) mark-making was supposed to evoke high tradition but instead seemes to describe an anxious rupture with tradition.
Annotated in pencil on the reverse: ‘Under the Willows, 1861, Edwin Edwards’
Printing
Printed by Ruth Edwards, c.1889. It appears that Ruth Edwards undertook the printing of the majority of her partner's work both during his lifetime and subsequently. In the late 1880s she prepared an unknown number of posthumous portfolios of Edwin Edwards early work, using plates that mostly dated from the 1860s. These impressions were printed on fine Japanese paper, laid paper or Chine Collé, and mounted singly on sheets of heavy off-white card measuring 456 x 367 mm.
History
Purchased at auction in a folio of seventeen etchings by Edwards, Roseberys London 17th June 2016. Conserved by Raymond McChrystal in 2024.
References
British Museum 1889,0508.14
1. The trip is mentioned in Lochnan 1984, pp.130-131 and cited by the Whistler Etchings Project at https://etchings.arts.gla.ac.uk/catalogue/people/display/?rs=1&catno=K082&key=EdwaE&xml=dat
